I started doing these to prevent achilles problems.
How often do you them?
How many reps?
How many sets?
For how long? Two weeks or more?
Straight leg or bent? Or both?
Both legs or just one?
I started doing these to prevent achilles problems.
How often do you them?
How many reps?
How many sets?
For how long? Two weeks or more?
Straight leg or bent? Or both?
Both legs or just one?
.
To prevent or to treat?To TREAT achilles tendonitis, the program is:
twice per day
3x15 straight knee
3x15 bent knee
add weight once the exercise becomes pain free
just one leg
twelve weeks
running only permitted if it elicits less than 5 out of 10 on the pain scale
For prevention I would do 2 sets of 15 just body weight, once per day, straight knee and bent knee.
See Northern Star's post above.
Here's the original paper. Results reproduced several times since.
What Northern Star said.
Also, I did them for years with running shoes on but started doing them barefoot after hearing a PT guy at Scott Simmons' Distance Summit. The guy's name was Fred Stoot and all his Achilles rehab slides showed people doing the exercises barefoot.
It is a completely different exercise without shoes and exposed a serious right arch weakness that I was unaware of. My arch got stronger, my Achilles got better quickly once I began barefootin' and I've been doing it that way ever since.
What kind of surface do you do them on? (I.e. wood step, plastic box, carpeted step, something else entirely?) Reason I ask is that my house has wood stairs and I find it incredibly painful on my arches to do more than 25 reps or so.
Article recommends 15 reps.
Carpeted step works for me.
By the way it's heel drops.
SlowFatMaster wrote:
Carpeted step works for me.
By the way it's heel drops.
It's a pun.
Wooooosh!
Track Name wrote:
Article recommends 15 reps.
Hm, good point. I should probably try actually following directions instead of thinking "feels too easy at 15. I wonder if I can do 50?"
I think last time I tried I got bored by about day 3 and put 40 lbs of weights in a backpack. Did ~40 reps, at which point I felt something pop in my ankle. Luckily it wasn't anything serious; just ached for a day or so. (Yes, I freely admit that I'm a moron.)
Pain threshold wrote:
Track Name wrote:Article recommends 15 reps.
Hm, good point. I should probably try actually following directions instead of thinking "feels too easy at 15. I wonder if I can do 50?"
I think last time I tried I got bored by about day 3 and put 40 lbs of weights in a backpack. Did ~40 reps, at which point I felt something pop in my ankle. Luckily it wasn't anything serious; just ached for a day or so. (Yes, I freely admit that I'm a moron.)
The paper says for treatment, 3 sets of 15 each day, twice a day, for 12 weeks, both straight and bent knee. Add weight when there is no pain.
40 reps with 40 pounds made me laugh out loud, literally.